The Federal Aviation Administration said it’s resolved the equipment outage at an air traffic facility in Philadelphia that severely disrupted air travel in the Northeast, leading to hundreds of flights being canceled.
Telecommunication lines have been repaired and operations were resuming at all airports in the region, though it will take time to clear existing delays, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said early Monday evening.
The outage occurred after the failure of the primary circuit at a Philadelphia facility that guides flights into and out of major hubs, including Newark Liberty International Airport and Philadelphia International Airport. The FAA then discovered that the backup fiber optic cable also wasn’t operational because it had been accidentally cut by an Amtrak construction crew.
The failures wreaked havoc on the Northeast, with disruptions extending to other New York area airports, including LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International and New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, which handles private jets. Flights were grounded throughout the day, leading to massive delays and cancellations that also affected arrivals to the United Nations General Assembly being held in New York City.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford and Duffy said during an event in Washington Monday the problem underscored the need for air traffic modernization.
The travel chaos overshadowed the rollout of the FAA’s new AI air traffic tool, known as SMART, which is designed to identify areas where congestion or weather could disrupt travel and recommend changes to reduce delays and cancellations. The FAA began using this new system in a “limited mode” Monday in the airspace around Washington
Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.
Topics
Aviation
Aerospace
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